Typically, the web designer doesn’t know. He has two options: baffle with bullpoop, or lie. Mostly, they’re honest and well-meaning fellows, and they go with baffling.

Web designers are not business people.

Web designers are not only not business people. They are not marketers or writers, either. And they certainly have no idea whether or not an idea will fly.

Now THAT is the right question: and by the time the desperate and starry-eyed entrepreneur approaches the web designer with a question, the poor designer:
a) assumes they’ve done whatever research bona fide researchers and marketers do before investing a month’s salary into something, and
b) feels too sorry for them to turn them away.

When they promise traffic, they know it CAN be done, and they really want to reassure their prospect that they’re not a complete idiot for having their particular crazy dream. (Everyone’s entitled to a dream, surely? I used to think so. No more. We’re only entitled to dreams that make our lives and those around us better. Otherwise they’re nightmares.)

The web is home to almost everyone in the world. Certainly, it’s home to everyone you want to sell to: everyone who can afford a computer. But a website doesn’t guarantee traffic. Or anything else, for that matter.

You need words, because that’s all Google can read. And you need words in your prospects’ inbox – not just somewhere out there, on the big wide web.

So what words are you using to reach the people you want to help? And how are you using them?